You and Science : Science for better living (1955)

Don't you love a science textbook with an atomic reactor on the cover? As part of our brave new age of atomic power was getting science into school. This was a high school textbook which included some interesting text and illustrations about space flight.

Brandwein, Paul Franz. You and science: Science for better living. New York : Harcourt Brace & Company,  624 p. 1955.

 First off was the widely known naval spacesuit.

 Chapter 8 had a few illustrations about our home planet and this really funky illustration how everything moves through space.

 And of course was the chapter "Space, Our new frontier". It is not enough to say that space is a new place for man to explore.  Space travel was the next railroad. We would tame this frontier and make the rockets run on time.

 This Rolf Klep illustration done originally for the Collier's series was a great way to suggest that the plans for the rocket were already done, we just hadn't gotten around to building it yet.

I don't usually post text from these books but the discussion of how soon this will happen and how much it will cost illustrates that the "space agenda" was being actively taught long before the general public was thinking that this was possible. I specifically like "the goals of the spacemen"

"Our guess is that some day all these things will come to pass. We hope you will live long enough to see it because we do not think the conquest of space is just around the corner but around many, many corners. Maybe you will be brave and lucky enough and clever enough to help it happen. It will take much hard work."

Space (1983)

Having trouble with motivation to get new stuff scanned in so instead here is something "out of scope". Usually I concentrate on books 1945-1975, but when I find something that has the right feel I want to include it.

This is a 1983 book in Hebrew that contains drawings to "colour, cut-out, and play with." It was made in Israel by Buki Toys Ltd. The book is actually a tablet of line drawings on cardbord and the book cover is actually a sheath that the "pad" fits in. There are 12 pages (one sided)

I like the mixture of fantasy and reality.

 The first looks like a starship to me

 The second a stylized capsule

 A lunar rover

A space walk

A LEM

A multi-stage rocket



 A "what do I know?"

A satellite dish

Collecting samples

Man and the Space Frontier (1962)

I love this cover.

Stine, G. Harry. Illustrated by Zacks, Lewis. Man and the Space Frontier. New York: Alfred A Knopf. (149 p.) 24 cm.  This book address the human factors that need to be accounted for in planning for space exploration, pressure, heat, g-forces, sound etc. Illustrations of  astronauts, a rocket and a space station.

The Red Planet (part 4) (1961)

As part of my hunt for non-fiction stuff about space flight I have a few comics books in the collections. In this case the illustrations were hidden inside The World Around Us: Undersea Adventures (#30) 1961. The World Around Us was Classics Illustrated's non-fiction series of comics. While not unique it was one of the few companies that published non-fiction and fiction comics.

As you can see from the cover, this issue contained part 4 of "The Red Planet". This was a 3 page feature about Mars and its features. It was used as filler to expand the size of the issue. I was lucky enough to pick up a page of art from this story which was drawn by Angelo Torres (a well know artist from EC and other comics).

Each panel is a scene from a trip taken from the Moon to a manned landing on Mars. The first panel (above) shows the take off from our Moonbase. It points out that to get to Mars you need to leave the Earth-Moon system before Mars is closest to Earth.

This panel points out how it is not a straight trip but rather a great curve. A optimal least fuel/least time trajectory.

We are reminded that Mars is flat. You will see dunes and craters and occasional hills (unless you land near the many canyons).

This final panel is one of my favorites as humans stand on another world. This was the 2nd page of the 3 page installment. For the 1st and 3rd pages that I did not purchase see below.

His and Her Books (1961)

Just a quick fun set of books.  One style of children's book popular in the late 1950s was the "dress-up" book. A child would be shown in different costumes with a little text about what they were pretending to be,

These two 1961 books show some of the last gasps of dressing up like a "space hero" instead of an astronaut.  While charming they remind us how fast the trends changed when real space flight became possible. Space helmets and space guns became un-chic as silver suits and count-downs became the new style.

I don't want to leave the space women out either.  It is surprising that astronauts HAD to be men but space heroes could be anyone.  You saw a lot less female astronauts in the 1960s.

Science World ( Sept 27, 1963)

I just love these school newspapers.  They bring back the excitement of waiting for the future to happen. It seemed like there was so much cool stuff to look forward to.

It all seemed so "scientific"  (when did that become a guarantee that something WOULD happen?)  As we observed the Moon and tested its surface and photographed it, we were confident. Going to the Moon was both very hard to do but also we were picking out our camping spot, our next place to launch from.

There were dangers and challenges but we had lived off the land before and the Moon was the next frontier to conquer and settle.

Skylab: America's First Space Station (1974)

Despite my best intentions it has been a long time since my last post. So today it is another wonderful pop-up book from the 1970s.

Peterson, Gail Mahan. Iillustrations by Carl Cassler. Paper mechanics by Howard Lohnes. Skylab--America's First Space Station, A Hallmark Pop-Up Book.  Mo: Hallmark Children's Editions. (20p.) 17 x 24 cm.

Full of fascinating facts about Skylab, America's first space station, its mission and the dramatic problems the first astronaut team had to solve. Excellent movables: three large double-page pop-ups, six tab-mechanicals and threedouble-sided turn-wheels. “Hallmark Pop-Up Book series.”

As always it is hard to give the pop-ups justice, luckily most are "flatter" in this book.  I enjoy how the illustrations give the sense of floating in space in near-Earth orbit.

Also you get a good sense of what it was like to stand at Cape Kennedy and watch a launch.

To some people this space station seemed a disappointment for its size and uses, however for some of this seemed really cool. someone was living in orbit over our heads. The films of them bouncing around inside an empty rocket fuel tank made space travel seemer much more than just traveling in a closed space for days at a time. These astronauts got to move around and tumble and "fly" through the air.

 We needed an outpost in space then and I am glad they could shoehorn the Saturn boosters into doing such a neat set of test flights.